Rich Fiscus
22 Apr 2008 23:18
It appears that online DVD rental giant Netflix, whose streaming video service has become very popular with customers, appears ready to make a major move into the set-top box market. Early this year the company announced a deal that will have LG manufacturing some sort of networked player that will work with the Netflix service, and now Reuters is reporting that deals have been made with with three more companies to sell similar devices.
"We have LG plus three additional partners actively working on integrating our technology into their products," Netflix Chief Executive Officer Reed Hastings said on a conference call with analysts.
"Three of the four partners are major companies, which each sell millions of devices per year and will enable the Netflix functionality in some of those devices likely in the fourth quarter of this year," he said, adding "The fourth partner is a small company, which will likely launch sooner than Q4."
No specifics about the identities of the new partners have been announced.